Resolved questionsHow to understand "make it meaningful" in the sentence?

People have always done this, I thought. They looked for a curved road around the plain truth of it: an undetermined future, no destiny, no veined hand reaching into our lives, just what happened and our watching it. Knowing this was not enough, and I struggled to make it meaningful, as they had perhaps done here in Germany many years ago, looking for some pattern in all the strange things that occurred, covering their faces with ashes and pigments from berries they’d gathered from thawed valleys in spring, standing over the bodies of boys or women or old men covered by leaves or grasses ready to be lit beneath the stones that would hold them down in case the fires and the heat and the noise of the burning woke them from their strange sleep.How to understand "make it meaningful" in the sentence: Knowing this was not enough, and I struggled to make it meaningful...?Thanks!